Friday, January 12, 2007

Friends & Neighbors Update

The north of Mexico is under siege. Gang wars for control of the drug market and cocaine routes to the United States took at least 2,000 lives in Mexico last year, most of them in border states. Serious journalism is also a victim.

Working as a reporter has become a very dangerous job in Mexico. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, seven Mexican reporters were killed last year, their work the confirmed or suspected reason. This count moves Mexico past Colombia — a country where journalists vanish with terrifying regularity.

Mexico’s count is still much lower than Iraq’s record of 39 murders in 2006. But it is high enough to accomplish what the traffickers want. Widespread intimidation has brought coverage of drug trafficking virtually to a halt.

Among the most prominent dead are Roberto Javier Mora García, the highly respected editor of El Mañana in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, who was stabbed to death in March 2004. Alfredo Jiménez Mota, the trafficking expert at El Imparciál in Hermosillo, Sonora, has been missing since April 2005. Last year, Enrique Perea Quintanilla, editor of the Chihuahua magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad, which reported on unsolved crimes, was killed.